It quite obviously has been going on for quite some time. #Sagan #DeepThoughts
“The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous
presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.” - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
34 years ago, on Feb 14, 1990, Voyager 1 took this image of the "Pale Blue Dot" from 6 billion km away, minutes before its cameras were shut off forever.
Carl Sagan, who played a key role in the mission wrote -
"To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
34 years later, how well are we doing on these 2 counts? How can we do better?
Here is Carl Sagan unveiling the Pale Blue Dot image on June 6, 1990 and eloquently describing what that image meant for humanity.
"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
The Voyager 1 spacecraft earlier today transmitted a 6.5 hour playback of data from its 8-track digital tape recorder (DTR)!
This data will arrive 22.5 hours later between 10:37 and 17:13 UTC on Thu, Nov 9 and be captured using 5 arrayed antennas at the NASA DSN Madrid site in Robledo de Chavela, Spain.
Tx rate = 1.4 kbps instead of the normal 160 bps, which requires simultaneous reception by the 5 antennas.
1.4 kbps * 6.5 hours = 4 Mbytes
Happy Birthday to Carl Sagan, who would be 89 today.
Sagan famously wrote about the 'Pale Blue Dot' - "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives."
Voyager 1 took the image of the "Pale Blue Dot" on Feb 14, 1990, from 6 bil km away, minutes before its cameras were shut off forever.
Carl Sagan (Happy Birthday) chaired the committee that selected the contents of the Golden Record carried by Voyager.
The record contains images, natural sounds, music and greetings in 55 languages.
Sagan wrote - The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space, but the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet.
NASA is sending a software update to the Voyager 2 spacecraft today!
The patch contains logic to auto-recover from glitches similar to one in May 2022, when the AACS system on Voyager 1 started sending garbled data. The root cause was not fully diagnosed. The patch will be activated/tested on Oct 28. Voyager 1 will be next.
Data will be sent at 16 bps with a 19 kW transmitter using the 70-m dish at @canberradsn.
Distance: 20 billion km; 18:40 light hours
It was 33 years ago, on Feb 14, 1990, when Voyager 1 took the image of the "Pale Blue Dot" from 6 bil km away, minutes before its cameras were shut off forever.
Carl Sagan, who played a key role in the mission and brought it to life, famously wrote - "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives."
Do you remember #Cosmos, that magnificent, unparalleled #TV#science programme from the 80s? And how it enchanted not only by Carl #Sagan's story-telling, but also the hypnotic #Vangelis soundtrack...
That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
Top spins currently: Funkadelic, Cymande, Jimmy Smith
Current Spotify Rotation: Run the Jewels, Wu-Tang, Dave Brubeck Quartet, QOTSA, Deftones, Misfits
Road: Men Elite Road Race | 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships (www.cyclingworldchamps.com)
As per the website: "The route and race information for the Men Elite Road Race at the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships."...